Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses dilemmas that the advent of South Africa's democracy brought for the 'Young Lions' of the 1980s internal township uprisings. The paper explores how – today as in the apartheid past – the images and horrors of mob violence haunt the imagination of ruling-party officials.

Paper long abstract:

This paper traces and analyses the various dilemmas that the advent of South Africa's democracy brought with it for the 'Young Lions' of the 1980s internal township uprisings. Few of that period's great hopes for change in class inequalities and generational hierarchies have been fulfilled. Instead, the sweeping 'mob' of 'toyi-toyiing' youth has become a pariah of the new democracy, as has the 1980s''revolutionary' egalitarian ideology. In the mid-2000s, the South African media is once again awash with reports of uncontrolled mob violence, be it black students who contest entrance barriers to higher education or black township residents who take the law into their own hands against what is perceived as an escalating crime wave - an apparent revival of the modus operandi of 'struggle' agency, with angry and destructive black youth 'toyi-toyiing' in front of burning tires and attacking state officials. These actions are usually portrayed as the manoeuvres of youth with a lost cause who are now destroying the fruits of democracy and unintentionally undermining their own 'black' government. The paper will explore how - today as in the apartheid past - the images and horrors of uncontrolled mob violence haunt the imagination of ruling-party officials. The paper will be based partly on historical material and partly on ethnographic field material produced in the townships of Port Elizabeth and Soweto from 2001 to 2004.